GREENBELT

When people's incomes are locked into making mortgage payments or rent, small businesses and local economies suffer. High mortgages mean little flexibility, and not much left over for other life purchases. The consequence: big chunks of cash flow to Bay Street instead of Main Street. There is no question that the province needs to take action now to combat speculation, increase supply and decrease demand.

Canadians love parks and protected areas and visit them often, especially this time of year. These natural areas protect our country's biological richness and offer Canadians and visitors alike places for respite, solitude in nature and the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual benefits of time spent outdoors. We owe it to all to ensure that our parks, including Rouge National Urban Park, are supported with strong laws and policies.

More than half the planet's people now live in urban areas. The need to supply food, shelter, fresh water and energy to billions of urban residents is resulting in loss of farmland, forests, wetlands and other ecosystems, as well as the critical ecological services they support, like providing food, clean air and drinking water. growing number of jurisdictions have responded by enacting strong land-use policies to protect farmland and green space through sound urban planning

If we value local food and want to maintain the critical benefits that nature provides, we must put food and water first. That's why we're calling on municipalities and provincial governments to redouble their efforts to protect our remaining farmland and green space from costly, polluting urban sprawl.

Newmarket is one of the fastest growing cities in Ontario. Unfortunately, they've now run out of room to grow. Like many other cities, it has no choice but to grow upwards. The trouble is that some local residents are resisting high-density development. What they don't realize is that thanks to the provincial government, they don't have a choice in the matter.

Lake Simcoe's water quality has improved since the 1990s due to a huge amount of work and restoration, but we are no longer seeing much in the way of improvement. We have already picked the low-hanging fruit -- the work we need to do in the future is going to be more expensive and harder to do.

As you may have seen, we've employed some creative tactics to draw attention to environmental choices in tomorrow's provincial election in Ontario. Our Penelope4Ontario.ca campaign featured an eight-y...

The lack of affordable housing in Toronto drives demand for suburban housing and this threatens the implementation of the Growth Plan. To prevent social and environmental collapse, we need to link sprawl-related environmental issues with affordability.

The mayor of Canada's largest city is in cost-cutting mode and a local food policy, originally passed in 2008, has just escaped the chopping block. Well almost. As many locavores will tell you, there is the price on the grocery receipt and there are the costs that we pay elsewhere -- the hospital bills, the environmental debt and the money farmers pay out of their own pockets to stay afloat.

Although NIMBYism can arise out of fear of something different in a community, it can also be the result of genuine concern for the local environment. I'd like to propose a new kind of NIMBY: Let's go green and say yes to Nature in My Backyard.